Since graduating from college and watching a bunch of my friends do the same, I’ve realized that loneliness is a lot more common when we get older than we might think when we’re younger. When you’re younger, you are surrounded by people and then all of a sudden college ends, people spread out, and it’s up to you to intentionally keep relationships.

Many things trail back to my close group of girlfriends that I met through my college small group. I’ve written about them before and thankfully, while our 3.5 year long small group is over, our relationships are far from that. Last night a few of the girls came over to my apartment to drink wine and catch up on the exciting, heartbreaking, and hilarious things that have happened recently.

In the last couple weeks, one of the girls got married and 2 others broke up with their long-term boyfriends, and the rest of us fall somewhere in between or further on in the relationship status department. That to say, some of us are in very opposite phases whether it be relationships or something else. But at the same time, it feels like we are all very much in the same phase. I think that’s how it works with really great friendships. There’s a bond that helps you get each other even if on the surface it doesn’t look like our friends are in the same boat as us. And it’s important to hold onto those friendships because we need them and they need them.

I know that going into the holidays, it’s easy to start to feel a little bit more lonely, especially if you’ve just gone through a break up. But you’re not alone in feeling that. It actually amazes me when I talk to different people (a lot of girls around my age) how almost everyone says they feel lonely. We should probably just call each other up and stop being lonely. And sometimes you have to initiate actually hanging out with your friends but it’s so worth it. Even many times when you don’t feel like it, your heart might need it. So as it gets colder and darker and full of holiday busyness, what can be a very wonderful time of year (my favorite:)) can be robbed of it’s joy because of loneliness. Sometimes we need to be alone, but if your alone time looks like just feeling lonely, then it’s worth trying to find a way out of that. Even if you don’t reach out solely for yourself, I’m sure you have people in your life feeling the same way. So go ask a friend to grab coffee or if you're are not a coffee addict (like I am) you can go ask them to do something else:)